The Story of the Lamb (Part 2)

*

He lay in his apartment at night, knowing that his life as a teacher was over. Not because of anything physical that had happened (because indeed nothing had). What had happened was in that wider, supposedly "mythical" space where things were truer than true and events that hadn't happened were still written down in the record books merely because they had been thought about.

The space that had separated his arm and her breast had turned out to be nothing but denial. He was in love with someone he was not allowed to love and this love was nothing new. The only new part was the large eraser slash down the middle of the negation. Denial had been denied. He was not a spectator, "he was the man".

*

You pass through a story like a tourist and discover its power is such that you are going to have to reside there for the rest of your life! Here is your new home.

*

In their sister church, one that belonged to the same denomination and city but (through some quirk) was part of a different diocese, there had recently been a scandal. One of the youth workers had been investigated for something or other, and the authorities had found child porn on his home computer. The story made the papers, the children were interviewed, the land of story began to bleed into the world of verifiable truth, and meanwhile the sister church next door tried not to watch but couldn't take its eyes away. This is horrible, the mothers said. This is horrible, the youth workers said. This is so horrible that -- it is too horrible for words and too horrible to think about, Don said. I can't believe it happened, I can't believe that there are no controls, that just where you are sure there are controls, you suddenly find --. Yet you could see them, you felt safe before.

*

And he went on and on.. And when even the parents turned to other thoughts, he continued to brood, had no choice. Because the lamb he had stolen -- had not really stolen -- had stolen in the land of "truer than true" where stories resided -- that lamb walked through all of his dreams and now lay down, heavy mournful thing, in the very center of his bed.

End of Part 2 of "The Story of the Lamb"

*